In New York, the CUE Foundation show for Notsuoh maven Jim Pirtle turned into a blowout party! The only hiccup to the night was when one drugged out Notsuoh regular passed out in the middle of performing and had to be taken to the hospital! Just like any other night at Jim's!(Click HERE for the cracked out artist statement)

Sharon Engelstein's Soft Head(shown here in NYC) was the best thing at the Big Block last night according to Juan and Marcia, and tonight they're off to Dallas for Aaron Parazette's solo show! Have fun in the crappiest city in the world y'all!

Otabenga Jones' good friend Robert Pruitt is enjoying the view from Northwestern, freezing his ass off in that 60 degree weather. I couldn't imagine. I would wear so many sweaters. The Houston native has accepted an offer to be a visiting artist in the Chicago school for the next year. Good luck, yo!

Just wanted to let you know about this interesting event at FotoFest on Saturday at 2pm.The current exhibit, Mechanical Perception, opens this Friday (please see attached press release). On Saturday afternoon we have scheduled an artist talk with Anderson Wrangle and Eileen Maxson.Anderson will be speaking in the gallery but Eileen will address attendees via thee World Wide Web and the wonders of iChat from Amsterdam where she is doing a long-term residency.Should be fun – if it works (and we have been testing it extensively).We’d love to see you here – and to see this news on your blog…

In other news:I wanted to let you know that we are working on the third exhibition in the Talent in Texas series, following Home and Garden (2004) and Native Sons (2006).

The new exhibit, Viewfinder, looks to be a bigger and bolder show than its predecessors. It will feature over a dozen Texas-based artists and is curated by Arturo Palacios (Arthouse, Austin) and Risa Puelo (Blanton Museum of Art, Austin). The exhibit is a first-time collaboration between FotoFest and Houston Center for Photography (HCP) and is split between the two locations. A final list of artists will be announced shortly.Along with the Mechanical Perception exhibit opening this Friday, it is a fall full of contemporary Texas photographic arts at FotoFest.

Well all the openings shift north from Montrose to the Heights today, so instead of the Big Block it's the 11th Street crew. Redbud has Brian Maguire, who's Irish so he might be cool. Post-apocalyptic painting, really. G Gallery has Carter Ernst, one of those Houston artists who has been working with scrap metal and expressionism since the 80s. And the New Kid on the Block, Neu-haus, has Paul Kittleson, one of the first artists to exhibit at Buffalo Bayou Art Park and a player in many an artists' lives.

If you're at the corner of Montrose and Bissonett early on there's new work up at the Jung Center- where the art is as hippie as you think it is. Lisa Qualls throws around her archetypes n' shit. If you're around there later, then the MFAH will be loud. Go late, very, very late. It's better then. It doesn't have anything to do with art, but they might let you walk through the John Al.. oh, wait that's closed. Well they might have the Cheney's Endg... oh. They got paranoid at the unwashed masses near their fancy stuff? Oh. Well... maybe they'll just put it on the lawn.

Thursday, September 4, 2008

This weekend is friggin' nuts. Too expensive on gas! You guys gotta slow down or start opening galleries in the same neighborhood. The weather after Gustav blew through has blossomed into perfection, the fever has finally broken in Houston.

Britt from the Chron and Glasstire have both slammed out their fall previews (albeit with very different scopes) and they both say go see Paul Kittleson.

Between the three art listers around there is a full slate for the first weekend of September, glasstire sez 5 openings on Friday and 3 on Saturday, spacetaker has 7 on Friday and 4 Saturday and artshound is just a retarded website that has 51 gallery listings for Friday and 54 for Saturday.

Of course, fuck those guys. This is what's happening, and I don't care if I'm being redundant-ant.

El Deseo, Begona Egurbide

6pm

First off, you've gotta hit up the Big Block. They shut their doors on time, aka 1/2 hour after it ends, so there's no going back after you get distracted somewhere else. Anya Tish has photoshop de espana, Barbara Davis has space cadet Joe Mancuso's resin-collage-Mary Heilmann-nuttiness. Perfect for the drugged-out (you should be). Joan Wich has Tracy Weir, no Tracye Wear, and encaustic homes. Peel Shop hosts Sharon Engelstein and her inflatable sculpture with Soft Head. FYI- Wade Wilson is selling concrete these days. Check out the James Surls candy in the back at BD and Frank Tolbert + Jeanne Casanova at JW!

CourtTV Unknown, Eileen Maxson

8ish pm

Eileen is in the show at Fotofest. Ariana Roesch is throwing Mechanical Perceptions all over online, and it is a great accomplishment to corral Stephen Hillerbrandt and Toby Kamps into curating a show with you, but this gallerist's daughter is gonna have more impact with her new gallery opening later this month. (more about that later)Mech Percep seems like a 50/50 split, with Maxson and Soody Sharifi on one side and Brian Piana and Anderson Wrangle on the other (Mei-Mei Liem straddles the fence- who the hell is she?) one good, one boring- you decide which side is which.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

bayoudawn has a suggestion for fixing Houston's measly recycling rate. In response to the city's purchase of a million dollar trash sorter he wants 50 grand to encourage Houstonians to recycle.

Weapons of choice? More paper!

Why not defer that purchase for six months and spend $50,000 on an ad campaign that harnesses the graffiti vandals artists... Give the folks over atAerosol Warfarea call to help you set up a submission process for public service posters promoting recycling.

Houston is cool enough to own New York for about a few hours on one day per year.

originally, at the turn of the 19th century, Notsuoh was the name of a local drunken festivalSeptember 4th, 6-8 pmCUE FoundationThe Art Guys curatean exhibit of Jim Pirtle's stuff, Notsuoh's debris and Houston's soul

The Language of Love, Robert Smith, 2006September 4th, 9-11 pmA/V Swap VideoTime invades the Angelika Theater in the East Village forThe A/V Swap 2008

Seeing a lot of attempts to eviscerate the LawndaleArtCenter for this summer’s Big Show makes me happy. Go ahead, talk about it! Complain that worthy artist were left out, and how below-grade artwork made it in. Scrutinize, criticize, ridicule and spit on others. Anyone whose work was in the show will call you out on your territorial pissing. They may even cite a few inaccuracies in your story, note contradictory statements out of context or stake their own claim to relevance. Maybe you guys should just blog about it you know. If everyone forgets your little drunken rant at Boondocks then where do you go? The dude who wrote “quite possibly one of the most horrific group shows I have ever seen” squandered his chance to elaborate, why should you? Positive and negative it all goes into Google, the modern melting pot- since this century isn’t any closer to national reconciliation. Sharpen your boots and bludgeon your eyes, y’all. Start something and unless you’re in the street slingin’ wheatpaste you’re not doing enough. We can’t hear you.

Why don’t you take a shot at taking down the Psychedelic Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich store front facades at Lawndale this month? Mary Magsamen and Stephan Hillerbrand would appreciate it. These two have been pumping out video and experimental work for the last decade, a husband and wife duo with a penchant for transcendental smoothies. If you’re actually into that kind of stuff, take a whack at Judith Cottrell and Alex Lopez’s minimal sculpture and shaped canvasses. How the hell can minimalism survive in the 21st century? could be your title. Come on, take it. It’s free.

Whatever you do don’t even think of criticizing (Re)vision by Shannon Duncan. What could you have to say about documenting the destruction of history in Houston’s inner loop? Are the mementos of crushed livelihoods not heart wrenching enough for you, you heartless bastard? Anyway, she’s already got you beat to the interwebs, having documented twenty-two zip codes worth of territory already at communitywalk.com/revisionhouston. Besides, she has tons of Polaroids, and that’s cooler than school. All exhibits on view through September 27th at 4912 Main Street. Lawndale is open Monday through Saturday during the day until 5 pm.

The school of thought that keeps capitalism percolation is democracy. We can always pull on them bootstraps to even out the playing field right? Well the same thing goes for elections and electives y’all, and art is a smoky back room game if there ever was one. Want to learn, grow and evolve? Get writing. Take pictures. Learn a little HTML. It’s not so hard and it’ll always be there for ya. In fact I am hooked up intravenously to electrical currents 24-7 that give me painful shocks if I forget to post something on the internet every three minutes. It really hurts and I want to kill myself, but at least I’m ahead of the curve, right?